Madmind

You know, I don’t want so much from life. There are only some things I wish for – a good  and entertaining movie is such a thing. Hence I love each and every movie that just gets this one thing right that entertains me, makes me laugh or wonder. As I recently had again to learn with Avatar this is rare nowadays. But it’s not impossible. Because where Avatar failed so miserably Tokyo Godfathers succeeded.

Tokyo Godfathers blasts Avatar to atomic dust to with its funny and lovable characters, with its simple yet engaging story. Even more: it does it so well I even don’t care about the deus ex machinas and some other small problems it has.

I finally gave up. After all of my friends nagged me to watch James Cameron’s Avatar I finally let my rejection flow away and go to my cinema of choice.

Since everyone is praising Avatar as the new holy grail of movies I will take my time here and rip this thing to shreds talk about my humble impressions and why some elements just don’t live up to the hype. (Be aware of spoilers (see flag on the left of the title) and length of post)

Imagine a big, crowded movie theater at the end of a movie. The light turns on. The audience stands up and starts to cheer frantically. Except for one little guy in the middle. He raises his hands and says a small “But…” Before he can even reach the second word everyone in the crowd yells “SHUT UP!”

Don’t you hate those moments?

Well, that’s the way I feel right know regarding Pixar’s newest movie hit Up. Despite all the great moments it contains I simply cannot find me loving it as I apparently should since all the other reviewers and critics do just that.

Take the average internet geek and you get something like this: Stupidity + Coolness – Money.

It’s hilarious that Moondrive – a short movie of the anime anthology Genius Party Beyond – accidentally exploits just this prototype to tell its hilarious story which follows a bunch of bankrupt thieves on their hunt for a treasure. Nevertheless I can safely state that Moondrive is one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time. This includes movies, by the way. It has tons of cool moments, interesting characters and style wherever you look. Admitted, the characters turn out to be a little bit flat but since this is a short movie that completely goes for “style” I can accept that. If you haven’t seen Moondrive or Genius Party Beyond, do it now. It’s only about twenty minutes long so you cannot say you ruined too much of your life afterwards.

So, and now let’s take a closer look at the best moments of Moondrive with an absolute disregard of spoilers (therefore the red flag on the left side of the title if you’re on this site and not using feed reader. This post was the reason I implemented all this technical AJAX stuff).

Disney’s penultimate animated movie Atlantis is a product which is everything and nothing at the same time. It had so much potential yet it never took off because of an apparent wish to not enter new grounds called grown-up animation. Will Disney try to go new ways with its The Princess and the Frog?

I doubt it.